Can you use Google Maps on a plane?

Why the blue dot still moves at 35,000 feet

Airplane Mode switches off the radios that transmit: cellular, wifi and Bluetooth. GPS is a receiver. Your phone listens to satellites and works out its own position without sending anything back, so Location can stay on while the transmitters are off.

Android phones work the same way. Most call the setting Flight Mode rather than Airplane Mode, and it leaves the GPS receiver alone in exactly the same way.

The position is not the problem on a plane. The map is. Google Maps normally fetches map tiles over the internet as you pan and zoom, and in Airplane Mode there is nothing to fetch them with. Anywhere you have not downloaded in advance shows as a blank grey grid with a blue dot sitting on it.

Before takeoff, switch on Airplane Mode when the crew asks and then check Location is still on. It helps to open Google Maps at the gate while you still have mobile data and let it find you. The phone then has fresh satellite information, and the dot is usually already in place when you look again at cruising altitude.

How to download offline areas before you fly

Do this at home or at the gate on wifi, because offline areas can be large. On iPhone or Android, open Google Maps, tap your profile picture or initial, tap Offline maps, then Select your own map. Drag the box over the area you want and tap Download.

You can also search for a place, open its sheet, tap More and choose Download offline map. That is quicker for a city but gives you only the area Google picks around it.

Offline maps expire. Google Maps tries to update them automatically on wifi once they are within 15 days of expiring. If you downloaded a map for a trip last month, check it has not lapsed before you board.

Offline areas take up real storage, so check you have room before a long trip. On Android 6.0 and later you can store them on an SD card set up as portable storage instead of the phone’s internal storage, which Google lets you choose in the offline maps settings.

Long routes need several downloads

Each offline area has a size limit, so one box will not cover London to Singapore. You need a chain of areas along the route, and you have to guess the route, because airliners follow airways and great-circle tracks rather than the straight line a flat map suggests. A flight from Europe to the west coast of the United States typically passes well north, over Greenland or northern Canada.

Some countries and regions cannot be downloaded at all. Google gives contractual limits, language support and address formats as reasons. If your route crosses one of them, that stretch stays grey however carefully you plan. Over the ocean there is little to download anyway, so the dot moves across blank sea until the next coastline.

A practical way to plan is to look up the same flight number on a previous day in a flight tracker while you are on the ground, and download areas along the track it actually flew. Prioritise the first and last hour of the flight, when you are lower and the detail below is easier to match to the map, and any coastline you expect to cross in daylight.

On a night flight the map matters less for spotting features, because you see lights rather than land, but it is still what tells you which city those lights belong to.

What Google Maps cannot tell you in flight

Google Maps is a road map with a position on it. It has no readout for altitude or ground speed, and it does not know you are on a flight, so it cannot draw your route between two airports or estimate when you will land. Directions offline only work for driving within a downloaded area, which is no help at cruising altitude.

It also does not name what is below in any organised way. You can zoom in and read place labels, but only where the map is downloaded and only if you know roughly where to look.

None of this is a criticism of Google Maps. It does exactly what it is designed for, and a downloaded city map is still worth having for when you land and your phone has no local data plan yet.

Apple Maps is the iPhone equivalent

Since iOS 17, Apple Maps can also store maps for offline use. In Maps, tap your picture or initials next to the search field, tap Offline Maps, then Download New Map. Pick a location, resize the area and tap Download. Maps shows the file size before you commit, which helps when storage is tight.

The limits are the same in principle. It is a ground map with offline directions and ETAs for journeys on the ground, not for flights, and it has no altitude or speed readout. Offline maps can also be removed by the Optimize Storage setting if you have not used them, so open the list before you leave for the airport.

If you use both apps, there is no harm in downloading your route in each. Storage is the only cost, and you can delete the areas when you are home.

Where a flight app does the job better

If you only want to glance out of the window and check which city that is, a couple of well-chosen Google Maps downloads are enough. If you want the flight itself, an app built for it saves the guesswork.

SkyDot uses the same phone GPS, with map packs you download before departure by region rather than by hand-drawn box. You start tracking when you board, and it shows altitude, ground speed, heading, the town or sea below, a great-circle route line and an estimated time remaining based on your current ground speed. When you land it detects the landing and saves the flight to your log. It does not show other aircraft or airline schedules.

Two things to know before relying on it. Tracking does not start by itself, so open the app and start it once you are on board. The world basemap is free; the detailed regional packs come with Premium, or you can unlock one region by watching a rewarded advert. Either way, download before you lose signal.